


Moving Forward

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Fenris, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris struggles to come to grips with his asexuality in connection with any kind of potential relationship with Hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Forward

**Author's Note:**

> (Fenris calls himself broken multiple times. He's not. But. It's a feeling I have about myself.)

Fenris watches the rain falling down past the open space of wall.

The hole is Anders' fault, and Isabela's. He was in the middle of a spell and she tickled him, and this is why Fenris doesn't like people just wandering about his mansion. But it does provide a nice breeze in summer, looking away from the lower ends of Kirkwall so the air is fresh, and in winter, now, it's a pretty connection with the outside world.

He listens to the door open. Listens as feet cross the stones below, the fast pattering of paws beside. 

Hawke. 

It's been one year, four months and some change since Fenris walked out on him after that night. It had taken a bit of time but now Hawke approaches Fenris as though it never happened. His careful joviality is still sometimes a little forced, but he puts the effort in and Fenris does it back. Still, it’s clear that Hawke wants him. Sometimes it’s so obvious that Fenris can scarcely breathe, he catches sight of Hawke staring at him with such intensity that Fenris has to turn away.

He has no idea how to manage it.

For now, he turns from the window to greet the dog bounding across the room.

“Don’t tell me you want to go out in this weather,” he says. Hawke’s hair is stuck to his forehead, and they both know that they’ve been out in worse weather.

“Mother’s doing dinner,” says Hawke. “Do you wanna come over?” Fenris narrows his eyes, because a dinner invitation for him is never just for him. “Isabela will also be there,” Hawke admits.

“Your mother is allowing that?”

“My mother asked Merrill, and Merrill refused without Isabela.”

Fenris laughs, a soft snorting sound that he cuts quickly short. He knows enough about Hawke’s woes with his mother. She still wants Hawke to find happiness, and has determined that Merrill is it: she’s a mage, too, kindly spoken if a little awkward, and she enjoys the sort of dangerous situations that Hawke often puts himself in. In Leandra’s mind it’s a perfect match, but Merrill is too distracted with her own concerns and Hawke - Hawke is still too in love with Fenris.

That reminder hits Fenris hard in the chest and he is unable to form words. Instead, he nods.

“See you in an hour?”

“Certainly,” Fenris manages.

 

Fenris goes to the Hawke estate nearly once a week. He opens the door without waiting for Bodahn, and hangs up his own coat in the hallway. His hair is wet and has gone that foul yellow colour because of it, and he shakes it out like a dog before crossing into the next room. It’s warm, and quiet without holes in the wall to let the sound of the city and the weather in.

Anders is here, which Fenris is unsurprised at. He’s skinny as ever, and the sight is worse for his lack of coat. Instead, he’s wearing something that Fenris recognises as Hawke’s.

Fenris glares, both at Anders and the coat and at himself. He has no right to feel this way. He walked out on Hawke; he was the one who refused any possibility of them ever working as more than a fighting pair.

The thing is.

The thing is this: Fenris is absolutely head over heels for Hawke.

It’s not obvious because everyone here is the same: if Hawke calls they come. If Hawke needs they provide. If Hawke asks something of them they will do it. (Even Aveline, who refuses any loyalty to someone not the city personified.)

But Fenris is unable to give Hawke what he wants, and Hawke is allowed to give his clothes to bedraggled mages, and he is allowed to lounge by the fire with his dog and one shoulder pressed against Merrill’s, and really Hawke should get over Fenris because Fenris cannot give him what he wants.

Fenris, who still dreams about his small stone room and the locked door, who dreams about Danarius and who cannot escape his past. Fenris can give Hawke only his skills at killing.

He is tired of being broken.

He takes the drink that Orana offers him, forgetting to pay attention to the fact that this is strange, an elf serving him, but he takes it all the same. Aveline is not there, so Donnic is not there, and Sebastian never attends things like this.

Fenris never thought he would ever have any friends, and now he has so many that he can have opinions on them. He can have friends that suit his different moods. Tonight he misses Bethany, and feels uncomfortable with Isabela’s continued remarks, and he wishes Varric were there to soothe things over. He sits beside Leandra, who talks to him happily about the current gossip.

So strange that these humans are so rich with such petty concerns. Joanna did not serve the correct type of cake at the end of her tea party the week prior. Gillian refused courtship with Douglas, and then went to Lissa’s in the early morning wearing red slippers and an evening dress. Everyone wants to know why but no one has the answer.

Fenris laughs in what he hopes are the appropriate places, though Leandra does not seem to mind that he is laughing more at the subjects of her gossip than the gossip itself.

Across the table Fenris can see Hawke glancing at him occasionally, a familiar sad expression on his face.

Fenris tries to ignore it.

He cannot change himself.

He is already trying to change so much.

 

.

 

Fenris wakes from a dream about Danarius and lies, panting. His mouth tastes like wine. He reaches out and touches his sword, which lies on stones beside his bed, and then he gets up.

In the next room over there is a cloth covering the hole in the wall. He pulls it aside. The sky is salted with stars and scattered with wisps of clouds.

If he turns slightly he can see the fence that hides the courtyard behind Hawke’s house. If he ever wanted he could climb to the roof of his mansion and look down into Hawke’s garden.

He draws cold air into his lungs, rinses his mouth with icy water, and returns to bed.

When he wakes the sun is high overhead and there is a heavy feeling in his groin. For a moment he wonders, but he needs only to relieve himself. It has been so long since he felt any kind of desire that he cannot distinguish the feeling properly anymore. He recalls a sunny day up the mountain when a breeze brushed the hair on the back of his neck and he shivered, and he felt comfortably pleasant and almost settled, and he had looked over at Hawke and imagined…

Imagined something he cannot do. Not without feeling sick and discomforted, without feeling disconnected from himself.

He remembers feeling desire but he cannot replicate the feeling.

He is an empty husk of a person, and he is broken, and he functioned better as a slave. Commands have no emotion to them, and his desires did not come into play.

 

.

 

There is blood on his leg. It is running fast over his shin and soaking into the hem around his ankle.

Fenris leans on his sword, and closes his eyes. The pain is sharp, but Merrill is also injured and so Anders has gone to her.

“Alright?” asks Hawke.

Fenris opens his eyes when a heavy hand touches his arm.

“Been better,” says Fenris. He tentatively puts some weight on his leg. He was wounded in the first few moments of the battle but had no time to treat it. Now the adrenaline is wearing off. The pain is consuming him.

“Sit down,” says Hawke, who sits down beside him on a rock and holds out a hand. Fenris looks at it a moment before realising that Hawke wants to take his sword and clean it.

Fenris would refuse. A weapon is sacred, but this is Hawke.

He hands it over and sighs, closing his eyes again. There is sweat in them, sweat clinging to his fringe and dripping down his cheeks. He rubs his hands over his face.

“Good fight, though,” says Hawke.

Fenris opens his eyes. Hawke is holding out Fenris’ sword. The metal is shiny and bloodless, and Hawke is very close. He smells like hot sweat, and he is so close that Fenris can see dust clinging to beads of sweat on his jawline.

He looks away. “At least your mages had the entertainment of murdering templars,” he concedes.

“You did your fair share.” Fenris considers giving his usual comment, but instead he says nothing. He lets Anders heal him, and refuses Hawke’s hand in standing up.

 

.

 

They are shopping, Merrill ahead at the next stall with Isabela and Anders behind them buying herbs. Fenris has nothing he wants to buy and has lingered beside Hawke out of habit.

“Ooh, look at this!” coos Isabela. “Look, Merrill! This is a wonderful colour. Hawke, does Orana sew?”

“Why?” asks Hawke, distracted by a dagger. It’s short and blunt but the handle is pretty.

“This, look.” She’s holding up a sheet of pretty blue fabric, probably far more expensive than she can afford, but the colour would suit her.

“Going to finally wear pants?” asks Fenris, dryly.

“Don’t be silly,” says Isabela.

“Perhaps some pyjamas,” he suggests.

“Pyjamas? Oh, no.”

“What do you wear to bed, then?” asks Merrill.

“Nothing,” says Isabela, with a wink at the woman selling the cloth. She blushes, while Isabela folds the cloth back up and places it down.

“Oh, I like this,” says Merrill, who is looking through the basket of scraps. “Fenris, what do you think?”

Fenris has no idea why he’d have an opinion on fabric. “What would I care what cloth you buy?”

“This could be for you,” says Merrill. She holds it out. “To replace the one on your wrist. It’s a bit tattered,” she adds critically. The cloth in her hands is red.

Fenris has been wearing the cloth for a long time but no one has asked about it, though it has been obvious that Hawke has wanted to.

“I -” he puts a hand protectively over the cloth. It is a bit tattered and old, the colour less bright than it was when he first took it from Hawke’s room, but to replace it? “No,” he says. “I don’t want that.”

“But,” Merrill frowns. Isabela puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Come on, hun. Let’s go find some feathers.”

“But that cloth is so old,” says Merrill. “I’m just trying to help.”

“I know,” she says, leading Merrill away.

Fenris remains next to Hawke. He feels more than a little awkward, and is horribly afraid that Hawke will ask. Red is Hawke’s colour. No one else wears it, not until Fenris put this tie around his arm. His feelings on his sleeve, as they say.

“I’m going to see if Olaf has any decent boots,” Hawke says abruptly. He marches off, and Fenris looks down at the red on his wrist. He’s a little embarrassed by it, but removing it is more ghastly than any awkwardness the others might put on him.

With a frown at himself he follows Hawke.

 

.

 

Perhaps it would be easier if Hawke were a little more like Isabela: if Isabela wants she demands, and if she is refused she moves on.

Hawke could stand to learn a thing or two from her.

So much has happened, and still the man can take time from his own worries to watch Fenris with that same old expression.

Fenris doesn’t wonder at Hawke’s emotions towards Anders anymore. He doesn’t wonder at Hawke’s emotions towards anyone anymore.

Fenris and Hawke are excellent together in battle. He uses two swords and Fenris uses one, and while Fenris is smaller and faster he has learned to ignore pain and he prefers to rush into the thick of things. Hawke dances about the outside, he watches Fenris’ back and trusts Fenris not to slice him in half.

Anders still jokes about that sort of thing, but Hawke stopped. He stopped after Fenris told him that things would never work between them.

They are excellent together in battle because they train together.

Today, they are at the barracks by Donnic’s request, giving a demonstration to the new recruits to the city guard. They scoffed at Fenris at first, his bare feet and gigantic sword versus the Hawke, but now they are silent.

Fenris dreads ever facing Hawke in battle. He used to be afraid that he’d have to, that perhaps Hawke would choose one of his mages over Fenris in some situation that he would be unable to walk away from. He was afraid that he’d have to put his sword where his mouth his, to fight for his opinions.

If he ever has to face Hawke he will die. He knows it without question.

Hawke is not fighting with all his strength, and Fenris does not reach for the Fade, and they spar together while Donnic commentates, pointing out what moves they utilise.

Fenris knows that Hawke finds this all very strange: the human learned through experience and later from Fenris’ tutelage. Fenris cannot remember ever beginning his training, but he does remember further lessons from a swordsman in Danarius’ employ.

A skill Danarius no doubt never expected to be used against him, but it will be. Fenris knows it will be. This thought crosses Fenris’ mind in a scattered fragment, and for a moment he pushes too far into his attack against Hawke and the man stumbles back.

“Yield!” Hawke cries, surrendering easily. He wipes his sweaty forehead on his sleeve and grins at Fenris.

“Another round?” asks Fenris.

“No need,” says Donnic. He tells his recruits to pair up, and Hawke and Fenris go to the barrel of water.

Fenris does not feel attraction in the same manner as Varric’s characters in his stories, but he still watches Hawke’s swallowing throat and the water dribbling over his chin.

He wishes he were a complete person. He wishes he was not broken.

 

.

 

There is not much of Danarius’ wine left, and Fenris never had much of a taste for it anyhow.

Tonight he takes the last bottle and he opens it, and he stares down into the dark bottle.

His sister is dead.

He drinks the wine, and he sleeps poorly that night.

 

.

 

“You’re a selfish cad!” Isabela yells at him, instead of saying hello.

“What have I done?” asks Fenris, dryly amused.

“Hawke. Just go and talk to him. You’ve stuck around, I presume you have some emotions in that black heart of yours.”

“It’s not so easy as all that,” says Fenris, feeling his voice stick in his throat. He’s discussed this with Sebastian, who is the logical choice. The man wants but denies, and although their situations are obviously different the result is the same: people ask what they cannot give. But Sebastian is not so much a part of their group, and Fenris has not discussed this with anyone else.

“Why not? You shagged once. He won’t say no.”

“That is not the problem.”

“Discovered an aversion to cock?” Close, but not the answer, and Fenris is mad at her for trying to force this from him. “What’s the issue?” asks Isabela, her voice suddenly softer. “We’re friends, you can tell me.”

They are, they are friends. He fought for her against the qunari, and he has bought her wine and fought beside her, and endured her jokes and stood silently by while she stared out to sea.

“I am not interested in sex,” he says.

Isabela, predictably, scoffs. “At all? Don’t be daft, sex is the best thing.” Fenris shrugs. “Oh,” says Isabela, immediately serious. Then, “was it that bad?”

Fenris shakes his head. “His hands - they made me feel trapped. I can’t,” he makes a useless gesture. “I cannot stand the contact.”

“I thought you were just a prissy bastard who didn’t like hugs. I guess you were a slave -”

“It’s not that,” Fenris interrupts, though he often wonders the same thing: perhaps Danarius has ruined him, forever. He is broken and untouchable, unlovable, forever tainted.

“No, no, it doesn’t have to be. I knew a girl who was the same. There’s no shame in -”

“There is,” snaps Fenris. He cannot sit for this conversation. “Of course there is. Who could want me?” He grinds his teeth. He cannot fight this. He cannot barrel through it. There is no target to be taken down. This is him and he must live with it and he hates it. “I want him and I cannot ask him to have me. I cannot give him that - I am not a whore. I am not a slave.” He will not allow himself to be used like that without his own desire.

“Oh, Fenris,” says Isabela. She wants to hug him but instead carefully folds her hands into her lap. “I’m sorry.”

He stares at the fire and shakes his head. There is nothing she can do to fix him.

 

.

 

His house is a wreck. He knows it. Everyone knows it.

There’s still that fucking hole in the wall, but today the weather is nice and Fenris is learning to read in the light of it when he hears the door open.

No one bothers to knock, which is a behaviour learned through his not bothering to ever answer the door.

He’s not in his usual room, so Aveline has to call out to find him, and by the time she’s come into the room his book is carefully closed, his place marked with a piece of cloth.

“Hello,” she says. “I brought some bread.” Donnic does the cooking in their house, so he knows it’s a gift from him. She eyes the hole in the wall. “That still there?”

Fenris glances at it and shrugs. “I am not a mason.”

“Surely you have the money to hire a mason.”

“I am not spending money on this house,” he sneers.

“But you would request that I organise the guard so that no one notices this house is, in fact, occupied.” Fenris holds her gaze, and she laughs and shakes her head. “You’re lucky you’re pretty,” she teases.

“You are a married woman,” he returns, breaking off a chunk of the bread and offers the loaf to her. She takes her own handful.

“Speaking of, the roster’s changed.”

“He will not make our card night?”

Aveline shakes her head. “He has a group of new guards he has to babysit.” She cocks her head to the side. “You have another visitor.”

“I am a popular man,” he says, taking another piece of bread.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

She nods to Hawke on her way out, and Hawke grins at her.

“Trying to tell you to move out?”

“I think she might have,” says Fenris. He offers Hawke bread, who takes some before sitting.

“You could just buy the mansion. It’s quite clear you aren’t going to leave.”

“I have no desire to put effort into this place,” he snaps.

Hawke holds up a hand, other holding bread. “You know me, I don’t argue against your choices. You’re a free man, and all that.”

“Pah,” says Fenris. “You say that, but I don’t feel it.”

“Killing Danarius didn’t automatically solve everything?” From anyone else it would seem as though he were scoffing, but he only sounds fondly concerned.

“It only took away the only purpose I had left. What do I do now?”

Hawke glances pointedly at the wall behind. “Renovate?”

Fenris chuckles. “I think it far more likely that I find another place to live. I have always considered this to be temporary.”

“Funny definition you have,” says Hawke. “Where would you go?”

“I have no idea.” He tilts his head at Hawke. “Have you ever considered leaving Kirkwall?”

“My sister is still here.”

“Of course,” says Fenris, immediately crushing his thoughts of riding off across the land with Hawke in tow. He has been listening to Varric tell stories far too often, and in those it’s always a human princess with the strong knight, not an elf who cannot stand the touch of another person.

“There it is again,” says Hawke. “That look, as though you are enraged, but I don’t know what at. Is Danarius haunting this mansion? Should I learn exorcism?”

Fenris shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. “Nothing you can solve.”

“Are you sure? I am,” Hawke stumbles a little, “here for you. No matter what.”

“I know, and I am grateful. I have not been the easiest of friends, I am certain.”

“Not so bad,” says Hawke. “Considering who I have to compare you to.”

“We never talked about that night,” says Fenris. It is obvious which night he means.

Hawke shifts, glancing out the hole in the wall to the blue sky beyond. “You didn’t seem to want to.”

“I didn’t know how to.” He has no idea how to form the next words. “It was easier for you to ignore me -”

“Which I never did,” Hawke interrupts.

“No,” says Fenris. “I thought perhaps you’d move on, but you didn’t.”

“I know, I’m a romantic fool, or so my mother told me,” Hawke gives a cheery smile that belies the pain behind. “You don’t need to explain.”

“I want you,” Fenris blurts out. “But I cannot have you.”

“What -?”

“Wait,” says Fenris, standing up. He needs to fidget. “Let me finish speaking. That night, I have never felt that anyone has ever wanted me, not for myself. The way you treated me - your friendship. It is the most important thing to me. Years ago when I first came to this city I was ready to give up, but I heard stories of you and it made me stronger. You inspired me to keep going. I would be incapable if I did not have you at my side.”

“The sentiment is returned,” says Hawke, softly. “But why did you leave me?”

Fenris inclines his head, looking at his toes. “I do not want to blame any one thing. I remembered too much of Danarius, and I was too fragile, still. And also -” this is the hardest, because everyone knows he was a slave, and everyone expects him to have problems about that. “I cannot stand sex. Your touch - the kindest thing I have ever felt - it made me uncomfortable.”

Hawke stands up all at once. “You should have said! I wouldn’t have -”

“I did not know,” snaps Fenris. “I did not have the words to explain, and I thought - in that moment I wanted you. Nothing occurred that night which I did not have some desire for, but it left me discomforted. I want you, Hawke, but I am not capable of providing you with what you want.”

“We can make it work!”

“To what end? Without sex it would just be friendship and we have that already.”

“It would be different. I love you,” Hawke blurts. “I want you, I want to wake up with you - if not next to you then near you. I want to watch you eat breakfast and I want to sit in the same room while you read your books.”

“It would not work,” says Fenris.

“How do you know?”

Fenris doesn’t know how to explain. He just knows it wouldn’t. Varric’s stories don’t have relationships without sex, and marriages are about producing children. Everyone interested in connecting with another person takes off their clothes. That’s what a relationship is, and it’s what Fenris cannot offer.

“I do not see how it would.”

“I want it to,” says Hawke. “I want you, and I want this to work. I will make it work.”

“You can’t -”

“I killed the Arishok. I survived the Deep Roads.”

“This is not a battle you can win,” Fenris insists. He needs to make Hawke understand it.

“We’ll figure it out! That’s all I’ve done, my whole life. If I have you at my side I can do it, and so can you - isn’t that what you said?” asks Hawke.

Fenris is shaking his head.

“Don’t you want it?”

“I do, but I don’t believe -”

“It will work. We can make it work. I want to. Please?” Fenris feels as though his whole world is tilting over, and he cannot breathe. “Please?” Hawke repeats.

“You are truly willing?”

“Yes.”

“Despite -”

“I have gone without sex for three years and I am sure that longer won’t kill me. I want you, however you’re able to have me. Fenris, I promise you. I want this.” He cannot believe this - he is unable to believe it. “Trust me,” says Hawke, and he steps forward and touches Fenris’ hand. It’s just a light touch, and Fenris can easily pull away. He’s aware of Hawke’s skin on his, rough calluses brushing over the lyrium and over the dry cracks of his knuckles.

It is his right hand, the one with red tied around it. Hawke’s looking at him, waiting, and Fenris knows he could still refuse. He knows that if he does Hawke will leave him alone.

Fenris trusts him more than anything in the world. He turns his hand over and takes Hawke’s in his. “If you are willing -”

“Yes,” Hawke insists, again.

“Then yes.”

 

.

 

Fenris breathes in the smoke and ash and looks over at Anders. The man is unapologetic. This is what he believes, this is what he has given his life for, and even as Fenris sneers in his direction he cannot help but marvel at his conviction. His dedication.

Looking over at Hawke, Fenris knows what’s going to happen. Hawke is going to fight for the mages. He is going to ask Fenris to stand by him.

Fenris takes his sword off his back and gives it a few experimental swings.

He’s ready.


End file.
